The Other Side
by raedbard
Summary: SLASH: Season 6: around 'Abyss': Jack's still missing Daniel and finally realises why when he starts to be haunted by the late Dr. Jackson.


Title: The Other Side  
Author: Raedbard  
Pairing: Jack/Daniel  
Rating: R  
Disclaimer: I don't own them, if only I did. sob  
Summary: Apres-'Meridian' fic with nods to 'Abyss'. Jack's still missing Daniel acutely and finally realises why as he starts to be haunted by the late Dr. Jackson.

THE OTHER SIDE

Almost two months had passed since Daniel's...departure.

Jack had tried not to count, not to replace the presence of his friend with tallies of the empty seconds; to stay away from the mind-trap which that kind of thinking would inevitably lead him to. But really, it wasn't working. The minutes were slow to pass. Downtime spent playing chess with himself, careless moves countered by the small part of his mind that still felt awake, but more often moves were left unplayed. The moves Daniel would have made; quick, incisive, cutting through Jack's strategies like sunlight through the shade.

His head seemed full of Daniel: things said, and not said, the memories Jack had expected. But not only that, Jack found he missed Daniel's physical presence, acutely. This again was almost to be expected; he was a physical guy and sometimes he needed touch in order to best appreciate things, but to have his brains crowded out with snapshots of Daniel's body seemed kind of an odd way to grieve.

He fell to trying to collect all these mental pictures of Daniel, to building up the perfect five year photoalbum of him. His old too-large glasses and the eyes behind them, the way his colouring best suited the green BDUs, the terrible haircut he'd been given when they'd been abducted by Hathor that time. Jack was only slightly troubled by his new found obsession with trying to catalogue the physical attributes of the late Dr. Jackson. It seemed to him to be just a grief-need, something to help with remembrance. The words 'sky-blue', 'marble-white', 'ash-blonde' never passed into Jack's mental inventory. He just missed his friend.

Jonas tried to fill the gap Daniel's departure had left in SG-1, and to give him credit, Jack didn't think he was doing all _that_ badly, and he didn't hate him, not really. Resented him a little, but more that he had to be there, instead of Daniel; resented the necessity of that particular replacement. Jonas was irritating, sure, but Jack had grudgingly decided that he was only trying to be useful in that annoying, scientist way. He was mildly surprised that all the science stuff still bit at him like that. He'd have thought Carter (_and Daniel_) would have forced him out of that particular attitude. Jack guessed they were okay.

He found sleep difficult, and the very opposite of restful. He seemed to be dreaming so vivdly that the dreams were draining, rather than rejuvenating. That he remembered the dreaming at all was kinda odd too - he never had in the past. And he'd certainly never had these surround-sound, smell-o-vision kind. He didn't exactly recall dreaming about Daniel that much either, not before all this.

"Daniel?"

"Hey Jack." After a pause, "It's good to see you."

"Are you really here?"

"Ahh, lets not have this conversation right now. I'll explain it all later."

"Daniel."

"It's me, Jack."

"I missed you."

"I know. You too."

"I don't understand this, Daniel."

"It'll come to you. I promise."

He reaches out to Jack, touches his shoulder and continues along his arm. His fingertips shimmer, they make the skin of Jack's naked arm sing. Jack looks into his (_sky-blue_) eyes and feels something shift inside him.

He wakes.

Life went on for the living. SG-1 went about its business all over the galaxy, but Jack still didn't feel himself. He still missed Daniel, and there was no use pretending he didn't, or not to himself at any rate. He thought the worst part of the whole sorry charade was the damn stupid 'another plane of existence' crap. It wasn't dead exactly, but it wasn't as if he got a note with a forwarding address either. There was no-one to be angry with and nothing he could fix. Just the way he was still missing Daniel and the fact that he couldn't sleep the night through anymore, not a word of a lie.

"Up late, Jack."

"Can't sleep."

"There's a briefing tomorrow, right?"

"Oh nine hundred. Some crazy thing, I don't know." And after a pause he asks, "How did you?"

"I have my...ways, shall we say?"

"So you're watchin' me?"

"Yes, I am. That okay with you?"

"Sure," then quiet, subdued, "You betcha."

"I have to watch, Jack."

"Thought you'd know it all already. Always used to."

A pause, loaded. Then, "No. That's not how it works. But I'm not spying on you, Jack, if that's what you're worried about. Just interested."

Still quiet, Jack manages, "Interested?"

"Interested."

Jack gets as far as thinking, 'I guess that's something' before he realises that he's been asleep all along, and when he sees light coming up through his window that twisting thread of loss twitches in him, and he sighs deeply. But ghosts always leave before sunrise.

The Jack O'Neill mental database for absent friends had got as far as Dr. Jackson's mouth that day. Mouth, and hands, and the memory of Daniel's back, curved and pale in a silent glimpse from three years ago. That day Jack had realised and acknowledged, with what was very nearly indifference, that the way he missed Daniel wasn't quite what he had originally assumed. But since Daniel was no longer around, since pale Dr. Jackson had rejected Jack's world, it hardly mattered.

"I don't believe you're really here, y'know."

Daniel smiles, "Yeah. I got that."

"Just a figment."

Daniel crosses his arms across his chest, still smiling, gentle. His I'm-about-to-bug-the-shit-out-of-you face. "So, uh, why do you keep on talking to me?"

"Didn't say I didn't miss ya, Daniel."

"No. No, that's true. Actually you said the opposite."

Jack shrugs. He doesn't care now. "Yeah, I did."

"I'm not..._gone_, Jack. I'm not dead."

"But you're not here, so what damn difference does it make?"

"I'm here now."

Jack just looks up at his ghost, puts on his most impassive face.

"You can touch me if you want to."

"Why would I want that?"

"It might make it more real for you."

"He's not here anymore."

"Jack..."

"You're not Daniel."

"Well, who am I then?"

Jack doesn't answer, although he knows what he thinks the ghost is. He wishes, against his better judgement, that it would come over and touch him. But the ghost is faithful to the fantasy, and Daniel would not have come over.

Daniel waits. He doesn't think for a moment about rules broken or about not interfering, because this is Jack. This is Jack still grieving, and since Daniel is responsible for the grief he feels he should be there. He should try to help somehow.

Daniel waits and watches Jack sleeping; all tension, frowning, his mouth set even in sleep. Daniel perches on the end of Jack's bed, his fingers playing in the less than fresh mess of cotton sheets. He watches his corporeal hand stroke the covers and it helps him remember sensation. He can't really feel; instead he mixes recollection with creative approximation and desire for sensation and comes up with something that is almost experiencing. He smiles and wonders if perhaps the poor result is the fault of his chosen object. Maybe try something a little more stimulating?

He closes his eyes as his slips his hand into Jack's hair.  
He seems to know that it's soft, has a memory of it against his neck which he doesn't have to try for. The stroke of his fingers is smooth and easy whilst the short hairs at Jack's temple prickle him. There's warmth too, and a clean but artificial smell. Shower, Daniel remembers. Jack showers before bed.

The warmth is what he's concentrating on now, and it draws his hand down along Jack's cheek. Daniel smiles as the stubble takes over the job of prickling him, even though it still feels strangely muffled, almost as though the air is thicker around this approximation of his body. He wants, suddenly and strong, to run his thumb along Jack's mouth; to feel the subtle changes in texture between lip and cheek, dip his fingertip in the new warmth of the moisture inside.

He figures he should give the 'extra stimulation' thing another try, and, with another sudden surge of wanting, Daniel leans over Jack and leaves a kiss that is gentle and insubstantial on his temple. A gift from the other side.

"I have to go now, Jack."

Jack's face is blank and his eyes terribly dark, "Sure."

"I'm sorry."

"Will you come back?"

"I can't, Jack."

In that even tone which Daniel remembers as a warning, "How come?"

"I was wrong."

"'Bout what?"

"I thought you'd understand."

"But I never was that bright, huh?"

"Jack…"

"Daniel. Please, don't go."

Jack is standing now, advancing not on where Daniel stands in the doorway but towards the window, going to pull the curtains aside. The sky is turning from ominous winter purple into a warm blue. Morning has come.

Daniel smiles, "I knew you were faking that dumbass thing, y'know."

Jack grins back, "I'm good though. Right?"

Daniel nods, one eyebrow raised. He smiles, then in the time it takes Jack to blink his face has changed and his eyes are grave and sad.

"I still can't stay. Even this…there are rules Jack, and I'm really not supposed to be here."

"Never saw why people worry so much about rules."

Daniel makes that 'yes, but' grimace, "These rules are kinda, uh…different. A lot more violent for one thing."

Jack nods. "So you can't stay?"

"No."

"But you're here now?"

"Yes."

"Then I guess that's something."

Jack looks at Daniel for a long minute, his head on one side, and he doesn't smile. He has to concentrate, because this minute will contain all the information he needs to complete his mental portrait in the weeks to come. Pictures to last a lifetime, he thinks. Then he does smile, and steps forward to put his arms around Daniel.

This Daniel_ can_ feel, and it's all the same except more so: shower-smell, warmth and soft hair buried against his neck. His fingers touch and stroke in time with the tiny moans he hears Jack making in his arms.

Daniel's skin feels different under Jack's hands, and he's not sure if it's because this is male skin or whether it's the unspoken something else, and for the most part he doesn't care, but all goes down in the inventory, whether Jack wants it to or not. The eyes are the same though, wide and blue, trusting him. They even have that glint of new discovery in them, as though Jack is going to be brushed and probed by Daniel's tools. That makes him laugh out loud, laying his face back down in Daniel's shoulder.

"What?" Daniel asks, half curious and half worried.

"Nothing, just thinking about tools."

"Er, okay...what?"

Jack shakes his head at him, "Not important."

Daniel raises his eyebrows, and Jack has to kiss him then, before he even gets started, and is rewarded with the wet sensations of an already open pre-vocal mouth. Whatever words Daniel was about to torture him with turn into moans that sound surprised to be there.

Surprise turns into need for Daniel. The promise of full sensation, and of these sensations of all the ones to pick, are becoming too much. He pushes and tugs at Jack, forgetting how to be gentle in the rush to feel, skin tingling and hands shaking with the effort of capturing the transient insubstantives which Jack's body create in his. He stops trying long enough to ponder on why, if this body is non-corporeal, the clothes which are part of the illusion need to be physically removed at all, but is inevitably interrupted by the long wet passes of Jack's mouth across his stomach and his warm, shower-smelling hand stroking his thighs.

As it turns out, it's Jack who is doing all the probing and brushing, and he's sure he's not being half as delicate as Daniel would be. He can't stop touching long enough to tell himself to 'slow down', 'be gentle' and based on the eyes-closed, mouth-wonderfully-open sighs and "Oh god"s which Daniel keeps on making, perhaps that shouldn't be worrying him at all. Even through that sensation is 'other' which covers Daniel's body, every contact of their skin gives Jack a buzz, every nerve is sky-rocketing with sensation. Jack smiles an irony-laden smile and moves his head down between Daniel's thighs.

Daniel's forgotten that he thought he needed to fight to elicit the best from these touches. He's actually forgotten most things, since he can only concentrate on the immediate. It's second by second now; Jack's warm wet mouth keeping him in the present, sending white cable of pleasure shooting through his body, making him buck and jump under Jack's hands.

Jack holds Daniel as they both sleep in the restful aftermath. Bodies stretched and satisfied now lie still and entwined; Jack's elbow poking Daniel's stomach and Daniel's heavy legs making Jack too hot. But they sleep, and that way they don't have to say goodbye.

Jack wakes up facing the window with its opened curtains, mid-morning light filling the room.

He's gone, and the other side of Jack's bed is smooth and without indentation.


End file.
